Sin
by Venus Smurf
Summary: Seven years after TC, Max reflects on her life, Ben, Alec and Logan. MA


A.N.: Yeah, yeah. I know this has been done a thousand times before. I just had to get it out of my system.

The words in italics, except for that bit at the end, are direct quotes from the show.

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"Sin"

_Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…_

Sooner or later, someone's going to tell you that time heals all wounds, eases all pain. Don't believe it. It's nothing but a lie, something people tell themselves when life becomes too much to handle. Time doesn't heal the pain. It doesn't take the hurt away. Even if I know nothing else, I know that. Time only masks the anguish, burying it beneath other emotions, tricking you into thinking you can get over it. You haven't, and you won't, not if it's bad enough. You can tell yourself that you've learned to function again, that you've recovered, but part of you has to realize it's not true. It's not so easy, freeing yourself of the hurt. It festers, burrows inside you and refuses to let you go, hiding until you're no longer able or willing to fight back. It eats away at you until you're dead inside, and that's not something you can ever recover from. The best you can hope for, really, is that eventually you'll learn to cope, or at least learn to keep others from noticing how much you're suffering.

I'm still working on that part, myself.

It's been seven years since my brother died, seven years of mourning, seven years of hating myself for my part in his death. Time hasn't eased my pain—the grief and the memories still cripple me, at times. I often wake up in the middle of the night, screaming my brother's name. I hear Ben's voice in my head, begging for the help I'd refused to give him when he was still alive. His face is in my dreams, haunting me, blaming me for not being strong enough or loyal enough to save him.

He was right, in thinking I wasn't strong enough. Maybe I never was. Maybe I'm as broken inside as Ben, and I've just managed to hide it better. I sometimes think I've only been pretending to be strong, all these years, and it's only a matter of time before someone realizes what a hypocrite I am. Ben did, after all. Ten years of not seeing each other even once, and he still saw through me.

_You're hiding your instincts, every minute of every day, so no one will know what you really are. _

_Soldier…_

_Hunter…_

_Killer._

I'm still hiding. It's easier to hide, to deny what I am than to admit that I was wrong about so many things, or to admit that I was scared. It's just…easier.

I don't know who I am anymore. I'm different from who I was before I escaped my creators, and I'm different from who I was before my brother came back into my life. Of course I am. The place my brother used to occupy in my heart is still empty, still cold, and that changed me, even more than everything else. I stopped being whole, the day he died. Maybe it's my own fault, but while I've finally come to accept that I'll never be the same, I can't take the guilt.

Then again, it was my fault that Ben died, so maybe I shouldn't even wish the pain or the guilt would go away. Ben is gone because of me, because I couldn't understand him or accept what he had become. I couldn't understand what he was doing, couldn't take his fears from him. I failed Ben, because when I couldn't take away his pain, I just took his life instead. Does that make me a monster, even though I hadn't thought there was any other way?

Zack would have found another way.

I look back, so many years after he died, and I still wonder if maybe I just didn't look hard enough for another choice. Was there something better I could have done? I've told myself there wasn't. I was protecting the people my brother would have killed, wasn't I? I was protecting _Ben_, sparing him from something that would have been far worse than death…wasn't I? They would have tortured him, cut him up and studied him until there was nothing left. Isn't it better to have a merciful end at the hands of one who still loved him than to be slowly tortured to death by people who thought he had less value than a defective lab rat?

But it wasn't merciful, what I did to him. I turned my back on him when he needed me most, turned my back on all that he believed and all that he should have meant to me. He was my brother, and I killed him. I keep telling myself that I would have helped him if I could, would have saved him from himself if he'd just given me a chance. Bottom line, though? I didn't save him. I murdered him, snapped his neck, then ran away and left him there. I took the coward's way out, because it was so much easier to end his life than to live with the idea that he was still out there, acting on the part of ourselves that I'd tried so hard to deny.

_I'm doing what I was made to do, what we were taught to do!_

Ben scared me. I won't deny that. I've spent too long running from myself to pretend that I wasn't afraid when I looked in his eyes and saw the evil I've kept hidden in my own. Of course, not denying my fear didn't keep me from trying to justify it, trying to ease it. I used to pretend, after he'd first died, that I didn't understand why he'd gone around killing people who hadn't ever done anything to him. I used to pretend that something was just wrong with Ben. My brother had lost himself, had let his doubts destroy what little humanity Manticore hadn't already taken, but it wasn't like that with me. He and I weren't the same; I wasn't capable of what he'd done. His darkness wasn't in me.

I was lying to myself, of course. Ben had become what he most feared, and while I had never gone as far as he had, the _thing _inside him was also inside of me. I'm a killer, too. There have been times when I've let instinct take over, when I've left bodies in my wake. Am I really any different than my brother? I _am_ the predator Ben told me I was, no matter how little I want to accept it. It was bred in me, that darkness of Ben's, built into my very genes. I am the animal he was.

And at the same time, I'm not. Something _had_ gone wrong with Ben, and while I could be just as much a killer as he was, I'm not like that, not entirely. I hate myself sometimes, just as he did, but I don't need to kill to ease that particular pain. I don't need to kill.

Maybe if I keep repeating that, I might actually start to believe it.

Ben really was lost, though. He was lost because he never understood just how human the transgenics are. We're not the gods he believed us to be, and we're not the monsters most of the population thinks we are. We're just ourselves, a different kind of human but human nonetheless. Ben never got that, and that's why he was always so unhappy, why he turned his back on me in the end. He'd chosen to be both his own god and his own demon, but I was trying to be only a human, and we couldn't understand each other anymore.

_You're one of the few people who could possibly understand._

I sometimes almost hate Ben for doing this to me. He could have tried harder, could have let me help him, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't let go of his damned faith long enough to see how much he was hurting me or how much he was hurting himself. It didn't matter, to him, that by destroying himself, he was destroying a little of me, too. He didn't care anymore, and that's why I hate him. He should have loved me enough not to hurt me.

Then again, I suppose that goes both ways, doesn't it? _I _should have loved _him _enough not to hurt him, but I hurt him more than anybody ever could. I almost hate him for that, too.

I never told anybody what happened between Ben and I. Nobody but Alec, that is, but then Alec is the only one who could even come close to understanding why I did what I did. He's Ben's twin, after all, and even though his soul hadn't twisted the way Ben's did, even though they're really nothing at all alike, Alec still has a part of Ben in his heart. And Alec had a right to know. Ben's insanity caused Alec to suffer, and I suppose Ben and I both owed him an explanation. Ben just wasn't around to give it, so I had to.

I don't know what I would have done without Alec. The guilt I'd been feeling over Ben for so long was only getting heavier, eating me up inside. Alec helped me with that, gave me someone to talk to. I couldn't have told anyone else, not even Logan or Zack. Logan can't understand the monster lurking inside me, and I wouldn't have wanted him to know even if he could. Logan is innocent, in his own way, and he didn't deserve to lose that over something I'd done. How would he have reacted, knowing that I'd murdered my own brother, who was, incidentally, a killer himself? Logan couldn't know, and even if we haven't been together in so long that I've almost forgotten we ever were, I still haven't told him. It's not something he needs to deal with.

And Zack…God, Zack was Ben's brother, too. We grew up together, the three of us, knew each other better than most siblings ever could. Zack wouldn't have understood, either. My oldest brother would have forgiven me for anything but this, because no matter how much he would have denied it, no matter how much he tried to make us all believe he felt no emotions, he loved Ben as much as I did. He would have protected our brother, would have found a way to get him out of there without killing him. He wouldn't have cared about anything, not even the danger he'd have been putting himself in, not as long as Ben was safe.

Like I said, I'm not that strong. I let Ben die to save myself, and Zack would never have forgiven me for that, if he'd known.

I've thought about it a lot, over the years. Zack, I've realized, probably knew all along what Ben was doing. Zack was always watching over us, and he was smart enough to have put two and two together. He must have known about the bodies Ben was leaving behind every time he went to a new city, but he chose not to do anything about it. It wouldn't have mattered to Zack that Ben was killing innocent people. He would only have cared that Ben wasn't getting hurt himself. Knowing that, should I pass some of the blame to Zack? He was also responsible, if he did know. He could have stopped Ben. Zack was the leader, and Ben would have listened to him. Did Zack even try? Or was Ben so far gone that not even Zack could have gotten through to him? I wonder about that, sometimes, too.

Maybe it doesn't even matter anymore. I could just be torturing myself over something that has no bearing on the present. Zack is gone, after all, because even if he's technically still alive somewhere, he's not Zack anymore. And Ben…Ben is dead. They're lost to me, have been for years. Maybe it's time to just let them go. I should, I know. I need to let go for my own sake, but I can't. I can't stop missing them or loving them or despising myself for what happened to them, so how am I supposed to push their memories away?

Of course, it's harder, with Ben. At least I can tell myself that Zack is still alive, that he's somewhere out there, living as much of a normal existence as one of our kind can. The biggest part of him may be missing, but he's probably happy, for all that. Heck, he's probably happy _because _of that. I don't even want him with me anymore, knowing what it would do to him. How could I? I loved Zack, always will, and it's because of that love that I don't want him to see how his brothers and sisters are still suffering. I couldn't do that to him.

Deep down, I don't think I'd want Ben to be a part of this life, either. Ben's mind broke because he couldn't deal with the injustices that come with being what we are. We've been hunted and hated, and it only got worse after we took over Terminal City. I wouldn't have wanted Ben to endure the years of starvation, the years of living in squalor while still having to watch the crosses being burned outside our own gates. It was worth it, to the rest of us, because at least we knew we were fighting for our own freedom, for our own rights, but Ben wouldn't have understood that, because to him only his faith had ever mattered. From what I've seen, freedom isn't often a part of faith, and it certainly wasn't a part of Ben's.

_We never should have left. Everything made sense there._

It hasn't been all bad, at least. I lost so much when Ben died, and even though what I received in return won't ever be enough, I haven't lost everything. I still have the memory of a brother's unconditional love in my heart, still have an echo of the faith that kept us strong for so many years and through so many deaths. Ben gave me that, and although the love wasn't enough and the faith died, I owe everything that is good in my life to Ben. Without him, I might never have had the courage to question my purpose, or my life. I might never have wondered why my brothers and sisters were dying around me, culled by a disease we weren't allowed to understand. I certainly wouldn't have been willing to escape, or to seek a life beyond the walls of my birthplace. The years I spent running from Manticore and hiding my true self weren't always pretty, but I wouldn't have had them at all, without Ben.

And more importantly than all the rest, Ben gave me Alec. If I hadn't loved Ben so much, I wouldn't have been willing to trust the smart-mouthed and arrogant man who wore Ben's face, and that would have changed everything. Alec would have been just another transgenic, to me, just another man to fool or run away from. Instead, for love of Ben, I allowed Alec to become a part of my life. I let him be my friend, and then my partner, and, much later, my second-in-command. He's become my other half, perhaps even my better half, and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't loved Ben first.

Don't get me wrong—I don't look at Alec and see Ben anymore. I used to, I admit, but Alec is so different from Ben that it's impossible to believe they even come from the same gene pool. I loved Ben because he needed love, because even though none of us were ever really children, Ben never grew up, not for me. In my mind, he'll always be the little kid who used to tell me stories to help me sleep, the big brother who came up with an entire religion for no other reason than to explain away the monsters that scared me. I idolized Zack because he was never afraid, but I loved Ben because he _was. _

It's different, with Alec. Ben couldn't cope with the way things are, but Alec doesn't shrink from life or the nastiness that comes with it. Alec accepts things when he has to, makes the best of whatever he gets and doesn't complain when nothing happens the way he expected or wanted it to. He doesn't cling to anything, does Alec, and that's also reason enough to say they're different. I can't imagine Alec ever becoming consumed by anything, as Ben was. When all is said and done, Alec is able to move on.

And yet, there's something of Ben in him, for all that. Sometimes I see Ben's intensity in Alec's face, and sometimes there's even Ben's vulnerability. Alec doesn't let anyone see inside all that often, doesn't let others know what he's thinking or feeling, but he needs to be loved just as much as Ben did. Alec needs to know that others want him around, that others care for him. He needs to know that _he _is needed, and that's something he shares with Ben. In spite of that, though, I can honestly say that I don't see Alec as a replacement for Ben. I don't love Alec only because I loved Ben, and I don't keep Alec around only because I couldn't stay with my brother. I love Alec because he is Alec, and even if nobody ever understands what I mean by that, it's enough, for me.

_Max, wake up.__ We're going._

_Where?_

I don't know where Ben is now. God didn't exist, where my brother and I came from, and I still don't know if he exists anywhere. I don't know if there's an afterlife…and I don't know if Ben would make it there even if there is. He killed people, innocent people. It wasn't even in the line of duty. How can a God that didn't even make him forgive him—love him—after that?

_God's forgiveness has no limits._

Would the Blue Lady have forgiven him, even if God couldn't? My brother believed so strongly in her, but even if she had been real, I don't think it would have been enough. Ben spent all those years holding so tightly to his faith in her, trying so hard to be what she wanted him to be, but in the end, even he'd known he'd failed. He'd become that which he'd most feared, and I think that if he hadn't died, it would have destroyed him anyway.

_Only the best soldiers get to go to the Good Place. The ones who fail…you know what happens to them?_

_They disappear._

I don't know about God or forgiveness or even all that much about the Blue Lady, but I did know Ben, and there's one thing that I can still do for him: I can keep him from disappearing, from being forgotten. I can keep the memory of my brother in my heart, keep at least a part of him alive. I can forgive him even if God can't, and maybe that's worth something, after all.

_Once upon a time, there was a little boy. He wasn't like anyone else, this boy, but he was happy. He had brothers and sisters who loved him, who cared for him and helped him through the bad times. And later, when the bad times got worse and he lost himself and went away, his brothers and sisters never stopped loving him. Maybe somewhere, wherever that little boy has gone, he feels their love and is happy again. _


End file.
